Michael Gove set a future Tory government on course for a showdown with the teaching unions today by promising to dissolve the educational establishment he claimed was responsible for "dumbing down" schools.

The shadow schools secretary set out a plan at the party conference to sideline local authorities, scrap the curriculum agency, sack the worst headteachers and return to traditional values in the classroom, with former soldiers imposing discipline and pupils expected to wear ties.

The state monopoly over schools would be removed, he said. Every school would be offered the chance to become an independent academy with greater control over their curriculum, the pay of teachers and the organisation of the school day.

Under the plans a Conservative government would:

• Allow the best schools to opt out of local authority control and become academies while others would have to bid to convert.

• Identify within the first 100 days of government the "very worst" schools, those that have been placed under special measures by Ofsted for more than a year. The number currently stands at 100. Proven academy sponsors will take over the schools by September 2011.

• Introduce a troops to teachers scheme to get ex-soldiers into schools to tackle indiscipline and improve leadership. Three charities that fast-track top graduates to classrooms and school management positions, Teach First, Teaching Leaders, and Future Leaders, would be given an enhanced role working as "incubators" for new talent to work in academies.

• Start an annual schools Olympics and re-establish national sporting league tables to encourage competitive sports.

Gove launched an all-out attack on the "educational establishment", claiming it suffered from "defeatism, political correctness and the entrenched culture of dumbing down". That establishment, he said, included the Qualification and Curriculum Development Agency – which would be scrapped – as well as principal government advisers and some elements within local authorities, teaching unions, teacher training colleges and academia.

"For far too long, out-of-touch bureaucrats have imposed faddy ideologies on our schools," he said. A Tory government would champion school uniforms, including blazers and ties, setting by ability and traditional subject-based classes.

He pledged to remove the people who had "dumbed down" the education system. He claimed standards had dropped in English schools in the last 12 years, citing international league tables, while discipline problems had increased as pupils manipulated the human rights laws to appeal against exclusions.

In the curriculum, there had been a "comprehensive decline in examination standards". Science had been dumbed down and history had been debased, he said, citing the removal of Winston Churchill from the history curriculum. "The failure to teach millions to read is the greatest of betrayals. But I'll be taking on the education establishment because they've done more than just squander talent. They've also squandered money.

"Instead of a system run from the centre, which has given us the drift towards bigger and bigger schools, the decline in standards of behaviour, the devaluation of exams and the dumbing down of the curriculum we will have a shift in power which will ensure the good sense of millions of parents determines our children's future."

The extension of the academy system would, Gove continued, create smaller schools with smaller classes, higher standards and tougher discipline "within walking distance" of pupils. He said he expected a fight to get the reforms through. "We will be attacked by those who've been complicit in decades of failure, who see their power, their privileges and their reputations under assault."

The general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, Chris Keates, said: "The picture Mr Gove painted today of an education service in chaos and riddled with failure is not only grossly inaccurate, but it does a grave disservice to schools, teachers, headteachers and support staff who have done and continue to do so much to raise standards."

The general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, John Dunford, said giving schools more freedoms would "polarise the system" and lead to "children at the most challenging schools" suffering.

On the timetable

In

• Blazers and ties

• Setting by ability

• The narrative of British history – including Winston Churchill

• Discipline

• More academies

Out

• Headteachers of the 100 worst schools

• "Fashionable nonsense" in the curriculum

• "Political correctness" and "dumbing down"

• Science exam questions such as "which is healthier: a battered sausage or grilled fish?"